


The Railroad Collection

by CurrieBelle



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AUs, And One songfic, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Multi, crossovers, frienship, lots of ships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurrieBelle/pseuds/CurrieBelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I made the very spontaneous and possibly unwise decision to open up fic requests during a seven-hour train ride. Here are the results! Shipping, friendshipping, AUs, comedy, love, drama, bears, merino wool and cashmere blends, airships, superheroes and Ace Attorney...so pretty much all the things you could ask for in one giant, disorganized pile.</p><p>I will continue to add to this until every single ficlet is finished! Each chapter is dedicated, of course, to the Critter who requested it.</p><p>Note that due to the volume of requests, I'm churning these out relatively quickly with minimal editing. Please be gentle :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Castles and Cordials

**Author's Note:**

> Starting with something light-hearted. The lovely tumblr-user pansychubb requested "a little fic involving Vex dealing with a drunk Percy. Fluff or angst (or both)".
> 
> So here we go, a little fluffy drunken Perc'ahlia. This one is set during the two weeks before the Winter's Crest festival in Whitestone. Enjoy!

"Vex. Vex! You don't seem to understand - I've got a _castle._ "

She hid her smile as best she could behind the cool curve of her glass, and crossed her legs. Percy lifted his hands, incredulous, his eyebrows raised, clearly convinced that castles and the inheritance thereof were the most ridiculous issues ever raised at a tavern. He motioned at the table, envisioning an imaginary fortress on its surface, shaping the walls and towers with strict, square gestures of his hands. From what Vex could see, he had quite an accurate layout going.

"Yes, you do," she confirmed, in the patient, slightly condescending voice of a schoolteacher.

"But-" he huffed, and then slurred, "I haven't the slightest idea what to  _do_ with it!"

"I don't know, rule it?" she suggested, and he frowned like that was _preposterous_. Vex gave an affectionate snicker, and took another swift sip. Poor Percival had been through so much over the past few weeks, and he didn't exactly _deserve_ to be laughed at too. Apparently the strain of leadership had overwhelmed him within three days of taking his title, and she'd found him in a slightly shadowed corner of the town tavern, halfway through a line of coppery-coloured drinks. A  _long_ line, one that even Grog would acknowledged with a nod of respect. Vex decided the responsible thing to do was to make sure "Lord de Rolo" didn't make a fool of himself in front of anyone important.

And the  _fun_ thing to do would be to let him make a fool of himself in front of her! A win-win.

On that front, Percy had yet to disappoint. Oh, she had space in her conniving, cutthroat heart for a slight flicker of pity - his expression was genuinely frazzled and he badly needed a shave - but it was a very, very small flicker. Apparently, Percy when drunk was just Percy intensified: distilled like a good, hard shot of whiskey. He had, in a surge of inebriated inspiration, built a gravity-defying tower out of his empty shot glasses, and he kept imparting increasingly ridiculous schemes and far-fetched questions in the middle of unrelated topics. Also, he'd taken to correcting her manners, which was more annoying than entertaining, considering they weren't exactly taking high tea. She was fairly certain that she was drinking out of a jar that someone had been storing old beets in for several months (whatever it was that she was drinking).

"So that's the long and short of it, eh?" he replied, and threw his hands up helplessly. "I just  _rule_ it?"

"Ooh, get people to call you  _Lord de Rolo,_ " she suggested, putting on a properly pompous tone.

Percy slammed another shot and winced. Over the glass still clutched in his hand, he pointed at Vex - which she was fairly certain was rude - and said, "Julius used to make me do that _all the time_." In a mocking, grumpy baritone, he said, "That's  _Lord de Rolo to you,_  Scrawny-" and mimed a casual back-handed swat through the air. A little brotherly tussle, then. His fingers hung too loose, though, and the shot glass slipped from them to go spinning on the table. "Whoopsie-"

Vex was too busy chuckling again to notice. "He called you 'Scrawny'?" she asked, and slammed her half-emptied drink back on the table. Percy immediately reached out to straighten it on its coaster. _Dick,_ she thought - who was the one building towers out of glassware, anyway? _Honestly!_

"Of course he did," Percy grumbled. "Brothers."

"Yep," Vex confirmed. "You know Vax calls me 'Stubby', eh?"

"But! But-" Percy cut in, leaning forward and tapping his finger on the table he was making a vital point, "I  _was_ scrawny. You're not stubby. You've got, you know-" he made a sweeping up-and-down gesture "-Legs."

 _Well._ Vex arched one eyebrow, and replied in her same haughty noble voice (she was growing very fond of it), "Have you been  _gawping_ at a Lady's legs, Lord de Rolo?"

She expected him to bluster and blush and back down right away, but to her surprise, he snickered, and folded his arms on the table. "Absolutely not. But!" and then he halted dramatically, raising one finger like he was about to issue his first proclamation in a roomful of squabbling underlings, "I  _have_ been drinking."

"I noticed," she said. That had been a disappointingly smooth recovery on Percy's part, so she gave him a roguish wink, and hooked the toe of her boot around the back of his calf. He lurched forwards over the table, nearly knocking over his glass sculpture, and splaying his hands out to brace himself.  _There_ was the lovely little dusting of a blush on his cheeks. As he was off-balance, in almost every way, she continued, "So, Percival. Are you nervous?"

"About-" he swallowed, and couldn't seem to find the next word.

She folded her own arms on the table, and leaned further forward. "About  _ruling,_ " she clarified, with a growing smirk. Ah, this was  _fun._

He spun the last full shot glass once in his hand, downed it, and confessed over his grimace, "Yes."

Feeling just a little guilty, Vex continued, her voice softer, "But you know you've got us to help you, mhm?"

"Yes," he said, smiling again.

"And," she continued, not bothering to repress her envy, "you've got enough money to throw at any project you would like."

"Hm," he said, and he tented his fingers in front of his face, looking upwards. The thoughtful pose sustained itself for all of a half-second before a light flickered on in Percy's eyes, and he gave a gasp of revelation. He clasped Vex's cheeks with both hands and, eyes wide and fixed on hers, whispered " _airships._ "

Vex said, "What?"

"We could have  _airships,_ " he said, his voice carrying all the breathless awe of a giddy child. "In  _Whitestone._ "

In vain, Vex tried to repress her smile. Ah, Percy had suffered a rough - well, five years. He could stand to dream unfettered for a while, and he probably wouldn't remember this utterly brilliant (and entirely impractical) idea in the morning. And the brightness in his voice, the eager, sparkling joy in his eyes - even with the scruff and the disheveled hair it made him look young and rather _fetching_ and -  _well,_ apparently she'd been drinking a bit too much herself. Percy was starting to look almost as attractive as Percy's treasury.

"Yes, darling," she said. "Yes, you could."

He squished her cheeks together until her lips were pursed. "I have a brilliant but slightly inebriated thought," he declared. "I will paint the first one blue, and I shall name it after you. And I shall name the second one _Le Trinket._ "

"Pershy," she mumbled, as best she could in his grip, "Leggo my fashe."

He squinted at her for a second, deciphering her words, and then he looked horrified and released her, and put his hands away under the table as if he were ashamed of them. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Vex."

Vex smiled back at him, her cheeks tingling. "Why blue?" she asked.

Percy glanced up, and met her eyes. He reached for her again - a softer gesture, slower - and she thought he aimed to wind his fingers through her hair, gentle and romantic. Vex leaned forward, and her heart beat quick and airy and happy as a hummingbird, and her cheeks grew pleasantly hot. His gloved fingers, the leather sticking slightly to her skin, curled behind her ear. Then his touch trailed down, following the thread-thin curves of the turquoise feathers she wore.

"It's your colour," he explained. "In my mind, anyway."

Oh, he spoke like it was a simple, indisputable fact, nothing _touching_ about it at all, and that was the last straw for her sanity. Vex sprung up from her chair, pulled away from the delightfully tender touch, and knocked the table with her knees on the way. Percy's tower of shot glasses cascaded down, and he spent a panicked second catching those that were about to spin onto the floor. He blinked up at Vex, confused, with those wide, clever eyes - blue like skies or warm, distant seas or the feathers she'd forgotten about from a bird she couldn't remember the name of -  _it's your colour, in my mind._

Aloud (very loud), she said "You're quite drunk, Percival. I'll - I'll get you some water."

And she swept away from the table, blushing furiously above her slightly stunned smile.


	2. Falling Into Rhythm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for everyone who requested a Percy/Vex scene from after Episode 44, but for sathalia on Twitter in particular, seeing as she actually wrote a fantastic one herself that I highly recommend! Check out Wait For It here on ao3 if you want...something that ends a little more happily than this one.
> 
> And this will definitely not be the last we see of Episode 44 in this collection. Definitely not.
> 
> ....Goddamnit, Percy.

Vex stood at her bedside, shivering, and did not move. The chill inside her body, deep and constant and numbing, was not the kind to be soothed by a night of warm sleep.  Neither winter nor Whitestone froze her to the marrow; it was the last touches of the Raven Queen's hand on her heart that set her trembling. For the evening, surrounded by the worries and voices and affectionate gestures of her friends (contact that lingered longer than it ever had before), she had felt nothing but gratitude. She was alive, and beloved, and their attentions felt more vital than anything.

But alone, everything became instantly, agonizingly different. Vex could not make herself work the way she was supposed to. Every process in her mind malfunctioned. She reacted too slowly; her movements grew lethargic. She had tried three times to pull the sheets back on her bed and found herself uselessly fluffing the pillows or smoothing the fabric back in place or doing something else entirely. The corners of her mouth ached from the smile she had worn all night. She stumbled with exhaustion and yet nothing repelled her more than the thought of sleep.

Vex could not lie down while she was - distorted like this, while her soul was still settling back into her body (a thought that made her shaking worse). She ordered Trinket to stay in her room, hoping he would get some rest on his own, and stepped out into the hall. She shut the door behind her, and paced the hallway in a loop. She could not empty her mind - she could not let her guard down or shut her eyes - she could not sleep - she could not be alone.

She could not suffer anything that would remind her of death, as brief and painless as it had been.

And with that thought, she realized the hallway was too quiet. No footsteps, no voices, no signs of life - 

But there was one sound, a single, distant chime like the soft bell of a church. She listened, and it struck twelve as she counted: and then beyond twelve, and past twenty-four, thirty, thirty-two - and she counted the glittering notes to forty before she recognized what they were.

Of course he would be awake as well. Vex made her way down the hall, down the stairs, and up to the door of the Whitestone workshop, matching her paces to each pulse of the hammer hitting steel. If her own rhythms were distorted - her hands still shook, constantly, gods - she could borrow another for now.

The door was ajar, a sliver of fire in the night. Vex pressed her hand to the heated wood, but did not push it any wider. She watched, and listened to the hammer-strikes. At this distance, Percy's steady, constant breaths of exertion accompanied the sound, a whisper of air underneath the ringing metal. He worked at a perfect, mathematical pace. No emotion, minimal strain, movements so precise and constant he seemed more mechanical than human - and yet she found the sounds comforting to hear, and the process comforting to watch. They mimicked a dependable heartbeat, when she did not trust her own. Even when Percy spoke aloud, he spoke between the strikes, as if he knew what she was listening for. "If you want - to come in - you're welcome to."

She pushed the door open, and it creaked in tandem with the heated hiss of drowning steel. Percy did not turn to look at her, facing away in a cloud of curling white steam rising from the water.

Did he ever panic?  _Ever?_ Mere months ago, he shot the fingers off a teenage boy's hand, and threatened  _you will tell us everything you've seen_ _,_ his voice perfectly even. Covered in blood and wreathed in smoke he'd murdered his former teacher, and his self-diagnosis was a single, growling,  _Fine._ Asked if he had been the one to kill her - to kill Vex - all he'd said was  _yes._

He removed his mask, and turned to her with it held to his chest. Dark circles, hair disheveled, a bead of sweat dripping from his glasses, and his gaze fixed on the floor - he looked as he did before they had ever come to Whitestone, sleepless, dreamless, distressed in his own eternally composed way. He tapped the mask against his sternum, three times, his eyes flickering over the floor, unable to meet her gaze.

"Is there something you need from me?" he asked, absent of all feeling aside from a polite measure of deference. It was tantamount to _A_ _t your service, ma'am._

Well, while he kept his composure, she could retain hers. Her performances just looked a little different.

She smiled, ignoring how that aggravated the ache in her jaws, and said wryly, "I thought I heard you down here guilt-forging."

Percy gestured to the workbench with his mask, and shrugged, and said, "Well."

Half-skinned wood, smooth curls of copper wire, vials of black powder, and a bundle of turquoise feathers sat arranged in strict angles and rows on the workbench, each of them glimmering slightly scarlet in the aura of the forge. Three completed explosive arrows rested on pegs above the bench, slender and uniform, their fletching facing her and the door. Vex approached the bench, sinking into the thickness of the heated air. Carefully, almost reverently, she skirted her fingers along the shaft of an arrow.

"Don't-"

The abrupt refusal surprised her. She turned to see Percy already halfway across the workshop, stopping just short of reaching for her. He gestured with the mask, fumbling, "That one's rubbish. I was hoping to - for something a little better."

Vex turned back to the arrow. It didn't look any different from its sisters on the wall, nor from any other gift he'd crafted. "She'll still fly," she said, her voice light and reassuring.

Her phrase struck him, and his composure cracked in two. He met her eyes, nearly in tears, and his voice shook as he breathed, "Vex, I am inexpressibly sorry. I can barely-" he looked back down, tossed the mask to the ground where he stood, and continued, "I am utterly ashamed of my negligence, and I wish-"

He fell silent. He pressed one gloved hand to his face, and heaved a long, rattling sigh through the leather.

"I know," she said.

Removing the arrow from its pegs, she sat at the workbench and spun her prize idly between her fingers. Whatever deadly chill had gripped her heart before began to fade, as the forge melted her bones. And now came the part where she would be magnanimous, where she would smile, still aching, and bluster that she had forgiven him already.

And then she realized she had not. In the silence, without the rhythm of the hammer to keep her steady, she lost her balance again. She squeezed the arrow in her hands and felt his throat instead - she wanted to strangle him with her ice-hold hands, to drown him in the bucket by the forge, to make him understand the magnitude of his stupidity. Percy  _knew_ better. And to say nothing of his _hypocrisy_! Telling Vax to be more cautious - _mocking_ her brother for _his_ recklessness! It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that he was one of the few people who understood her almost as well as Vax, one of the few people she loved well enough to call family, and that she had to look at him and see nothing but his heartless answer of  _Yes._ Yes, he was the reason she died.

Worst of all - the revelation that made her finally choke out a sigh of her own, that finally made her smile collapse from her face - she knew she could say none of those things. She could not afford to shatter Percy that way, not now. Vox Machina needed their gunslinger, and his inheritance, and his safe haven in Whitestone.

And she still needed Percy.

The moment he spoke again, his measured voice dulled the sharp edges of her rage. "I suppose my apologies would do nothing to make _you_ feel any better."

Vex picked at the arrow's flesh with her thumbnail. "No," she admitted.

Silence, broken only by the pops of the coals in the forge. She knew that such a silence, so stuffed with anticipation it didn't feel like silence at all, meant that Percy was choosing his words carefully, crafting a perfect sentence to present to her. Vex waited for it, as she always did. "When I spoke with your brother last night," he said, "I told him I was trying to learn what was important to me. And now I have learned that lesson in the cruelest possible way."

Percy joined her at his workbench, and then knelt before her on the soot-flecked floor. "So - in this moment, what do you need? I will grant you anything I can give."

Tears burned in her eyes. She dropped the arrow, and he flinched as it clattered on the floor. She grasped him by the shoulders, curled her hands in the fabric, and shook him. "You-" she stammered, willing the tears not to escape, even as they did, "-you stupid, stupid bastard."

"Vex-"

He reached for her face, and she released him, and swatted his touch away. Furious with them both, she smeared her tears from her face with the heel of her hand. She stared out into the workshop, into the murky shadows in its distant corners, and said, "Keep working."

"On the arrows?"

No protest, no more attempts to touch her. "On anything," she said, and her voice felt like an atrocious tool to use - stuck and sniffling and worn.

"That's all you need?"

"That's all I need."

Without a single moment of hesitation, Percy stood. Bitter and tired as she was, Vex assumed he was rising to leave, until a slight scrape of wood on stone dispelled the thought. He had simply retrieved a chair for himself, so he could work alongside her. The steel he had been folding rested abandoned in its pool; as Vex watched, the image blurring at odd intervals from the resurgence of her quiet tears, he started to assemble an arrow he had left half-finished. She folded her arms on the furthest corner of the grimy table, lowered her head into them, and shut her eyes. She did not want to catch his gaze and see the guilt in it. She did not want to risk summoning another apology to his mind. She only wanted to listen. The ticks and hisses and clattering songs he created while he worked sounded familiar, nostalgic - normal. Slowly, her anxious spirit settled. Her trembling ceased; the chill vanished from her bones. Before she could realize that she had found her rhythm again, she slept.

When she awoke, she felt a weight on her shoulder. It was more a touch than a burden, light as a landed bird. She recognized it to be Percy's hand, resting as lightly as it could on her back - measuring the slow rise and fall of her breath, ensuring it was constant.

"You're awake, aren't you?"

Vex uncurled from her position on the table. The forge had gone out, leaving the world grey and blue, the colours of early morning. Her heart was steady. She stood, and Percy's touch lingered where it lay, a tender, trembling star of heat on her skin. When she stepped closer to him, her eyes still half-lidded and heavy, he cradled her in that hand. She bowed her head into his shoulder and hugged him.

"Are you still cold?" he guessed.

"No," she said. "Are you?"

For a moment, he stood immobile in her arms - and then he pulled her closer and held tight. His thumb stroked the curve of her shoulder. She could sense him squeezing his eyes shut. "Thank you," he said, his voice soft, tears trapped inside it. 

Vex took a long, steadying breath. Her heart beat even and true. She had slept, and she had woken, and Percy had worked. She raised her head, only slightly, just far enough to see six completed arrows in a perfect row on the workbench. Things were normal, or close enough, and he had made them that way. That was infinitely better than an apology.


	3. The Critical Turnabout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for something completely different!
> 
> This is the second of two fic trades in the collection, this time with asiainthelight / derolo, who wrote me a fantastic little Percy/Vex piece called The Raven Knight, set in her serial killer AU, and it's creepy and it has bird metaphors in it and I LOVE IT. 
> 
> And in return, she requested an Ace Attorney Perc'ildan AU, to which all I have to say is...
> 
> :3c
> 
> Oh, and also-

"- _Objection!_ "

Vax slammed his hands on the table and instantly regretted it. The clamour in the court fell silent, like he'd fired a gun into the air, and he felt every pair of eyes suddenly trained on him. He burned under the slightly startled gaze of his sister at his right hand, the coolly irritated look of the prosecutor, and, of course, the defendant, who glanced up from the stand with that lingering-but-flickering spark of hope in his eyes. Shit. Shit! He had absolutely nothing to say, but if he didn't stop the trial here, everything was over.

Everyone was so quick to condemn Percy, so easily convinced. Yes, the only people in the elevator where the crime had taken place were Percy, his father, and a witness who had already testified. Yes, both Percy and the witness confirmed that Percy had thrown a gun in the elevator, panicking at the sounds of the witness and his father fighting. Yes, he admitted that the gun had gone off. And yes, they had found a gun with Percy's fingerprints on it, which had been fired twice, and while the second bullet was unaccounted for, the bullet that killed Frederick de Rolo matched that gun. But-

Alright, phrased like that, it did  _sound_ pretty convincing, but fuck that if they thought it was enough to condemn his best friend. Those people in the gallery didn't  _know_ Percy. They knew the cutthroat prosecutor with the ruthless reputation, the smug smirk, and the case-closing one-liners that often filled the whole court with tense, appreciative  _oohs and ahhhs,_ and they just wanted to see him sink.

He didn't look like that prosecutor now. Percy leaned forwards, eyes seeking Vax's, his hands tightening on the brim of the witness stand. He looked like what he was - a lost child who had wandered into a courtroom and found himself convicted of murder.

Vax swallowed, and looked back towards his opponent.  _Shit, Percy, don't look at me like that now._ The sweat started to gather on his forehead and under his collar. A woman coughed sharply in the gallery. The pieces in Vax's mind just wouldn't fit together - the elevator, the gun, the missing bullet...

"If the second bullet wasn't in the elevator - maybe the murderer, uh...took it with him?" Vax said, his voice growing so thin and high he sounded, even to himself, like air escaping from a balloon.  _Great, nice one. Thrilling counterpoint, Vax._

Percy covered his face with one hand. Vex rolled her eyes beside him. A much louder slam echoed from the opposite side of the court, and the prosecutor bellowed, "Preposterous! And even if he did, this mystery murderer surely would have disposed of a bullet after fifteen years. Unless he had wits comparable to the defense, I suppose."

Half the court chuckled. Vax heard his sister's nails crinkling sharply into their case papers. " _Fuck_ this guy," she whispered. "He needs to eat a bag of legal dicks."

"Yeah, no fucking shit." Vax agreed. Every time Prosecutor Briarwood bellowed out his arguments it was like getting punched in the chest by a steamroller. Vax was glad the judge either had poor hearing or didn't care about the defense's little strategy sessions, because he really needed to vent with some therapeutic cursing. Both he and his sister had been thrown out of court for language before, and he  _really_ couldn't afford to do that now.

Vax glanced over at Percy again, and saw him thinking hard. He didn't look lost anymore. Percy, unlike the smug prosecutor opposite, was taking Vax's idea into proper consideration, and filing through all the ways it could possibly be true. Maybe he was on to something.

"Maybe," Vax drawled, speaking his thoughts as they came to him, "he _couldn't_ get rid of it?"

The Prosecutor arched his perfect brow, and purred, "Are you sure you don't need a little more time to think that through, counselor?"

Shit. He was so condescending, but  _really_ charming about it. Between the defendant and the lawyers, this was probably the most attractive courtroom in the country right now-

Wow, okay, he needed to focus. Under the the charm, there was a threat in the prosecutor's eyes - a fierce, angry glow.

"You just need a little imagination," Vax argued. "What if the defendant hadn't shot the victim - but he _had_  shotthe murderer?"

The crowd buzzed and tittered, trading the theory around. It didn't last: Prosecutor Briarwood's booming " _Objection!"_  shut down every last whisper. "This is groundless theorizing! And nobody at the courthouse that day was treated for a gunshot wound-"

Vax shouted his own " _Objection!"_ over the prosecutor's - and, well, objecting to an objection was sort of unconventional, but he could swing it. The judge actually looked entertained, and suddenly, Vax's mind was rocketing forwards, pulling all the pieces together before he could even see the full picture himself. "Which is why nobody ever found the bullet! Let's say our hypothetical dickhead-" the judge flinched, but Vax pressed on "-knew that having the bullet removed would leave a paper trail-"

Uh oh. The prosecutor looked  _scared._ And now Vax was scared, because they both knew where the train of thought was heading, and neither of them could stop it now. "And he would certainly know that," Vax continued, "if he was a prosecutor - if he was, say, the only other lawyer at the courthouse that day - the only other person with opportunity - someone nursing a grudge against Frederick de Rolo after his recent defeat in court!"

Vax's voice rose in pitch, in speed, in energy. He flung his hand out and pointed across the court. "The defendant didn't shoot Frederick de Rolo, Prosecutor Briarwood -  _you_ did! Percival shot _you_ by accident, and the bullet stayed stuck in you for ten years!"

"That's outrageous!" he roared, over the gasps coursing through the gallery like a wave. "How could you possibly prove that?"

"Uh-"

Vax looked to his sister, who raised her eyebrows, and urged him on with a jerk of her head. He looked at the prosecutor, whose panic was slowly cooling, and whose smug smirk grew back behind his perfectly groomed goatee. And then he looked at Percy, and his doubts vanished, quick and clear as a magic trick. His old friend stood with his head bowed and his eyes shut, like he was thinking. Or praying. He could not let Percy believe in his own guilt for a second longer than was necessary. Vax had come so far to exonerate him, and he wasn't going to give up now.

Plus, that tiny frown on his mouth was goddamn  _heartbreaking_.

There had to be something. He started riffling through the papers, his mind abruptly blank, and then he hit on an idea that was so stupid he would absolutely have to try it.

"Vex," he hissed, "have you still got the detective's metal detector?"

Bless her heart, Vex realized exactly what he was going for. She whipped the clunky instrument out from behind the desk with a wolfish grin and a wink.

"Where were you keeping that?"

"Brother, I've been carrying this around since Grog gave it to me. You're not very observant for a lawyer, you know-"

"What are you two nattering about?" Prosecutor Briarwood barked. Vax stood up straight, and propped his hands defiantly on his hips.

"We're going to prove where the bullet went," he said. "If you'll submit to a little unorthodox test."

His opponent's eyes went wide. He slammed his fist into his desk, and shouted, "This is an _outrage_! Your Honour-!"

The lawyers both snapped their heads to look at the judge. In the end, he was the god of this little corner of the universe, and it would come down to his verdict. Calm as ever, he leaned forwards over his stand, cocked one eyebrow, folded his slender hands, and said, "Alright, Mr. Syngorn. You can certainly try."

Vex vaulted clear over the desk, raced across the courtroom, and swung the metal detector up across the prosecutor's body. As it flew past his shoulder, it let out a shrill series of screaming beeps. Vex gave a triumphant laugh, and Prosecutor Briarwood swatted the machine away with an inhuman yell that shook the pillars of the courthouse. Scandalized titters broke out in the gallery again - and then a slam echoed through the room, and the entire court fell silent. It came not from either of the lawyer's benches, but from the witness stand. Percy leaned over, and lifted his head, his eyes deadly.

"I know that scream," he growled. Vax felt chills crawl up his neck. All the shouting was one thing, but Percy had this powerful way of making everyone listen to him, no matter how softly he spoke. "I didn't shoot my father," he continued. "I shot  _you,_ you treacherous bastard - and you killed him!"

XxXxX

When Percival de Rolo's Not Guilty verdict was declared, the celebration was pretty much limited to the Syngorn twins screeching and hugging each other on the landing of the courthouse stairs. Detective Grog joined them, of course, and lifted and squeezed them both in his arms at once, but most of the other spectators were too busy being  _devastated_ at the fall of such a  _respectable_ prosecutor as Sylas Briarwood. The three of them simply couldn't bring themselves to care. It was the turnabout of the decade, and the three of them expressed, in various creative ways, how many legal dicks Prosecutor Briarwood was welcome to consume.

Of course, there was one other person who had some celebrating to do - and Vax caught sight of him practically soaring across the upper hall, and dashing light-footed down the stairs towards them. His scarlet coat flared behind him, and a broad smile captured his face. Knowing stuffy old Percy he'd probably stop short at the bottom of the stairs for some sort of grateful, intimate handshake, and Vax would have none of that today.

So he hopped up onto the second stair, and intercepted him, grabbing him in a hug around the middle before things could get too formal. Percy squawked indignantly, grappling for balance. He ended with his arms wrapped inelegantly around Vax's shoulders, which was a pretty good result, actually. Vax swung them in a staggering half-circle, and set Percy down, clinging tight. His favourite prosecutor started some sort of blustery protest, but Vax hushed him before it could become a real word. "Nope, not today, de Rolo. We're gonna hug this one out."

Heart-pounding stillness for a second, and then Percy's arms tightened around his shoulders, and he pressed a smile to Vax's cheek. Earnestly, he said, " _Thank_ you, Vax."

Vax opened his eyes, and gave the witnesses on the landing a grin and a wink. Detective Grog replied with a double thumbs-up. Vex mimed throwing up over the banister. Chuckling, Vax stepped back, ready to enjoy the flustered smile on Percy's face - a smile he could take credit for! And yeah, the smile was there, lopsided and dizzy, and Vax liked it so much he clapped both hands to Percy's cheeks like he was framing it.

"I hardly believe it," Percy confessed, his voice stunned and airless. "Even  _I_ didn't think I was innocent."

"Well, you know, I've always been smarter than you," Vax said, and that pulled a slightly stunned, breathy laugh from Percy - and oh,  _man_ this was a good feeling, all the nervousness and thrill of victory buzzing straight down to his fingertips and Percy's little smile warming his heart like a stray beam of sunshine. The silence stopped being comfortable and grew sort of - tense, and Vax could feel the sweat gathering under his collar again, as Percy's eyes seemed reluctant to leave his face-

"Oh, god," Vex groaned, just loud enough to hear, "stop them before they start making out."

Vax rolled his eyes. He decided to wisely and judiciously walk the line between doing exactly that and pissing off his sister, and settled for planting a loud kiss on Percy's forehead before clapping him on the cheek and asking, "You like noodles, Prosecutor? We're all going out for a snack to celebrate."

Wearing a blush that glowed brighter than his coat, Percy answered, "Certainly, I'll join." With a laugh, he looked at the assembled company's hopeful gazes, and removed Vax's hands from his face. But it was a gentle gesture, and he did not untangle their hands once they were lowered. Chuckling, he finished, "and I'll buy."


	4. Guidance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up in Currie's "adventures in ships I have never written before", hydr0dr4gon on tumblr requested a Vaxleth piece set after Episode 44 by the Sun Tree. This one's a little short and sweet, but hopefully it will not disappoint all you lovely Vaxleth types. Consider this one in canon with Chapter 2. Enjoy!

When things go disastrously wrong, Vax's first instinct is  _move._ He shares this instinct with his sister, and the day she dies, they both leave their beds unoccupied. They do not cross paths on their midnight wanderings, and Vax doesn't know whether to deem that lucky or devastating. She'll ask about the ritual, and he cannot answer her while he still does not know what, exactly, he has traded for her life.

He travels down the path to the town of Whitestone, mapping the streets in his head. Either he is unfamiliar with Whitestone's inner workings, or some unknown guidance drives his feet, because after four hours of walking he crosses under the shadow of the Sun Tree no less than five times. He never intends to find his way back to it - his thoughts are monomaniacal, fixed only on which way he will turn at the next corner - and yet he always returns to the open square, the broad leaves, and the rolling ground around the roots. On the fifth crossing, as the sun begins to peek over the rooftops, his feet finally cool down. He stops in the silent square, and sits with his back against the tree. He shuts his eyes, and thinks, A _lright. What are you trying to tell me?_

When he opens his eyes again, Keyleth is already kneeling beside him, the sunrise summer-bright in her eyes, and her fingers halfway through a fretful draw along a lock of orange hair. He looks at her a while, permitting himself that short, harmless pleasure before they have to speak - and they do.

He starts with "Hi," and an unbidden smile. "Almost didn't notice you, Kiki."

"I was trying to be quiet," she replies, and smiles back. "You weren't sleeping, were you?"

He laughs, short, through closed lips. "I couldn't, actually."

"Well, you should have come to find me. Like last time," she says, and her voice is almost teasing, taking nervous steps towards flirtatious. They cannot approach each other any other way, it seems. They circle, they weave, and they test each other's limits inch by inch. The dance is slow, but he is learning to enjoy the tempo.

He tries something himself, feeling brave, and he takes her hand from where it sits bunched in her wind-cooled skirt. He tangles their fingers together, and her hand is so warm he can't help but think of the fire trapped inside it.

"So," she says, and her voice gains a regal, rounded tone. She's more Princess Keyleth than Kiki, which makes holding her hand feel strange. She asks, "Do you know what this means?"

"What does what mean?"

"What deal did you strike with the Raven Queen?"

Vax sighs, and looks up through the branches of the Sun Tree at the dappled dawn. He has seen Pike call angels and speak with Gods, and he envied her then - not so much for her faith in itself, but for the certainty it brought her. He thought, mostly because of Pike, that Gods provided that guidance. Dealing with the Raven Queen has granted him no such revelations. Nothing has changed, besides the chilling sense that there are unblinking eyes fixed, constantly, on the back of his neck.

"I don't know," he confesses. "I didn't think to ask."

"Well," Keyleth says, still sounding majestic, with her head held high, "That was stupid."

He glances back to her, touched, in a way. She squeezes his hand punishingly, like a punctuation mark for something she has not said aloud. Vax tilts his head, feeling his hair drag on the bark. "You know I would have offered the same for you."

Keyleth wrenches her hands away, and raises them haplessly into the air like claws, and says "aagh!" For a moment, Vax balks, wondering if she's about to go Minxy and shred him like paper. That would certainly be better than her tears, shining without falling and making her eyes glassy like jewels. "What makes you think we want to hear things like that?" she says, the regal tone in her voice trembling until it breaks.

"Kiki-"

"Enough! Don't you think that's selfish? Vex and I don't want you to throw your life down for us. There were other things you could have offered!" She takes his hand again, in both of hers this time, and squeezes it forcefully enough that he can feel her heart thundering. "We do not give up like that. We - we all believe in life. We're on the side of life. Right?"

Vax looks at her steadily. She is on that side, firmly on that side, with her hands that can spin flowers and fires from nothingness, with all the forms of all the wild world inside her, with her unquenchable convictions. His sister, too, drags her body back from the brink of death again and again, and drags Trinket, or Vax, or Percy, or any other wounded creature with her. Pike stands there too, certainly - and, with her own resurrection, with her magic, maybe that is the single word Sarenrae has shared with her. Life, for them all, is a simple and impossible creed.

He hopes only that the Queen has not pulled him too far from that.

Another pulse courses through him - Keyleth squeezing his hand again, prompting his answer. He says, "We are."

She stares a moment longer, reading him. Then she shuffles closer, stumbling slightly on the hem of her dress, and sits down beside him. She leans her head, carefully avoiding the antlered crown, against his shoulder.

Morning comes swiftly to Whitestone around them. Doors clatter open on distant streets, and the lamp-lights flicker out. They do not move, or jump at the noise. The tree seems to belong to a different world, and they can watch the city rising as if through glass.

"You'll make a fantastic leader one day, you know," he mutters.

She laughs, almost a snort, and says "Sure," with skepticism lacing her voice.

Vax turns to kiss her hair - hard as it is to find a place to make contact between all the feathers and flowers - and smiles against it. "Sure," he repeats, a thin laugh threading through his own chest. He breathes in, and feels her smile against his shoulder. He has not slept, but she is revitalizing.


	5. The Unbridled Guilt Industry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this fic is actually a combination of prompts! lindspector, on Twitter, wanted Percy apologizing to Vex with a romantic gift in a not-terribly-romantic way. Teliz20 from tumblr also wanted Percy apologies. Annnnnd I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with that until the fantastic argella1300 from tumblr requested, in most excellent detail, the gift that Percy gives in this chapter. Thanks!
> 
> Enjoy this fluffy Frankenstein, and sorry about the length. I got excited about Cassandra.

"Are you  _knitting?_ "

Percy jumped, his chair lurching back across the floor with a screech. Cassandra stood behind him, almost smiling, her arms folded. While his heart was still pounding, he considered chucking one of the skeins of wool in his sister's direction. Unfortunately, it was a nice, expensive blend, certainly made for better things than use as a projectile. Paying for them, along with the hooks and the dye, had chipped another (not insignificant) portion from his inheritance. At this rate, his guilt was set to bankrupt the de Rolo treasury.

So he settled for turning back to his work with an extravagant eye-roll. "Please, Cassandra," he corrected. "Crocheting. You know better."

"Well, excuse me," she scoffed. Evidently, the comment did not cause that much offense; she pulled a chair up next to him and dropped into it with a loud squeak. Cassandra rested her chin on her hands, and watched.

Percy tried to ignore her scrutiny, but in truth he was merely counting down the seconds until the obnoxious questions began. A pity Cassandra felt the need to disrupt the rhythm of his process. Like tinkering, crochet had a therapeutic tempo to it, and it was driven by similar principles. Tension, symmetry, function first and creativity second. Making things with his hands, whatever they were, put the world in order for him - provided the world did not interrogate him about his intentions.

"Who's it for?" she asked. Cassandra could be dreadfully predictable.

"Not you," Percy replied. He speared the hook through a stitch, a little too forcefully, but he needed to get back into the groove somehow. As an afterthought, he added, "now go away."

For a blissful ten seconds, she fell silent, as she considered the order. The only sound in the study was the rasp of wool over his fingertips and the slight clicking of the hook. Shame he couldn't finish the scarf in his workshop - Cassandra almost never bothered him in there, even when they were younger and she possessed even less discretion - but he didn't want his gift covered in grease or smelling like soot and sweat. Instead he'd hidden himself in a room upstairs, and repurposed the dusty case of the harpsichord in the corner for a desk at which to work. An out-of-the-way corner, but not nearly as secret as he'd hoped.

"Is it for - oh, what's her name again - the girl with the bear? Vax?"

"Vex," he corrected automatically, and then realized he'd sprung on the answer a touch too quickly. Cassandra's curious grin gained a wolfish edge when he looked up to glare at it. He threaded another stitch, tugging the yarn a little too tight. "Vax is her brother," he continued, "and please do shut up."

"I know that look," she sang. He could see her feet swinging giddily back and forth under her chair in his peripheral vision. "It's the same look you gave Vesper's governess when you were fifteen. You're all pink-"

Now  _that_ was a thought he hadn't passed by in half an age. "It is absolutely nothing like that," he said, keeping his voice as dignified as he could.

Yet, in his own mind, the slightly fuzzy memories of Vesper's governess triggered the rather unwelcome revelation that he had a  _type._ It lay somewhere along the line ofdark-haired and smirking. The governess's name slipped through his grasp, and that was infuriating, but he  _did_  remember her unintentional role in all this: she'd taught him to knit alongside Vesper, and he'd practiced furiously in the entirely vain hope of impressing her. Apparently Percy was at his most productive when he had a muse.

"Oh, please, Percival, you are not half the sinister, inscrutable knitter you think you are."

Without missing a beat in his stitches, he extended his foot and pushed Cassandra's chair slowly away from him. She started giggling, and pressed her hands to her cheeks. Despite himself, Percy couldn't help but grin. He didn't think Cassandra would ever look so childishly giddy about something so stupid again.

(And it really was stupid, to think a scarf and a pair of crooked fingerless gloves could make up for what he'd done. They weren't even up to his standards. Normally he'd forgive himself for the imprecision - he hadn't made anything since his family died - but in his current mindset, every minor slip seemed a fair excuse to berate himself.)

"Well, I certainly think you have a better chance this time," Cassandra said. Percy realized his sudden surge of guilt must have been quite obvious in his expression - her voice sounded much gentler. "And you should have a chance to be as happy as you can manage."

Of course Cassandra would know better than to say  _happy_  without qualification. For all the pleasant memories they had, they were only memories. Their reality was a dusty, dim-lit room with an untouched harpsichord, and the ghosts of seven beloved people cooling what warmth he and Cassandra could gather between them.

But she tried so hard to fight off the gloom, so Percy gave her a slightly strained smile. He completed the last handful of his stitches without pushing her away again, without verbal retaliation, and that was enough for Cassandra to realize she was welcome to stay. Percy tied the final stitch shut with a knot, sealing the scarf into a loop. He clipped the yarn, and tucked the stray end into the weave of the wool. He pulled it slightly taut, testing the strength of the weave he had created. The colour shifted pleasantly over his hands, through a spectrum of grays and deep, misty blues. He'd wanted something brighter at first, but realized, in time, that a duller palette would be safer. He didn't want to give a gift that would be hard to hide in the shadows.

"It turned out rather well," Cassandra mused, crossing her arms on her knees. "Are you going to package it?"

"Do you think I should?" Percy replied. He folded the scarf between his hands, and set it carefully on the surface of the harpsichord.

"If it's a gift, it should be wrapped. Especially a romantic one. And you should include a card."

Percy laughed, little more than a short grunt. "I don't think it would be fair to call this romantic," he said. "It's more of an apology."

"Then you definitely need a card," Cassandra insisted, and then titled her head curiously to the side. "What have you done to offend her?"

Speaking of cruel memories. He'd been trying to drown that one for days, and yet it kept striking at him from nowhere, swift and ruthless as a bird of prey. He covered his eyes with his hand. He saw Vex's body flung from the dais, her ghostly, glassy eyes, and the sparkling green dust of the burst residuum on her chest. Every time the images passed through his mind's eye, he had the same impulse - to sprint from wherever he stood, to find her, to make she was still alive and awake and smiling. He calmed the thought, with a slow, rattling sigh.

"I almost killed her," he said. "I made a foolish mistake, and it nearly cost Vex her life."

 _Nearly. Almost._ He slipped in those qualifications so stealthily, didn't he? She had died. Nothing almost about it, aside from the fact that she was somehow - miraculously - still here.

"Percival?"

He lowered his hand. Cassandra stared at him, a look of unrestrained disapproval on her face. "Yes?"

"You know you're the worst, right?"

"I am entirely aware of it, yes," he confirmed, with a mirthless laugh.

"I haven't the slightest idea how people deal with you," she said, and rolled her eyes. With a lurch of his shoulders, Percy started laughing harder, and she joined him. It was the kind of laugh that happened when nothing else could be said or done; the situation was indisputably ridiculous. It could not be salvaged, only enjoyed for its absurdity.

"You'll want a card," Cassandra insisted, as their laughter quelled. "I think all the good pens are downstairs, though."

"Of course," Percy agreed. He gathered up the lopsided gloves and the completed scarf, and rose from his seat, rushing to the door. He tossed the bundle from hand to hand as he walked, deep in thought. Perhaps Cassandra would be the next one to make something for, while he still had a little time on his hands. She'd been alone far too long, and circumstances forced her to be alone again - he'd been neglecting her.

Thinking about Cassandra as intensely as he was, he descended a nearby spiral stairway with his eyes fixed on the floor. He rounded the corner, moving a touch too fast, and blindly collided with someone ascending. With his free hand he grasped for their arms for balance-

"Oh! Percival! Have you seen Vax? He’s up and vanished on me again-"

-and found himself staring at Vex's broadest, most charming smile. He kept her steady by the elbow, and held the bundled gloves and scarf aloft in the other hand. She caught sight of them, and leaned, slightly, in his grip, to get a better look. "What have you got there?"

 _Well,_ so much for the card.

"Er, nothing much, really," he said. This was shaping up to be a disaster rather quickly; at least with the arrows he'd had time to think of something clever to say. "More results of that unbridled guilt of mine, I suppose."

Her eyes gleamed with a curious light. She folded her hands together, pulling naturally out of his grip, and leaned forwards to get a better look at her gift. "Your guilt has certainly been very productive," she quipped.

Percy grinned back at her - and the expression came to him so easily, so painlessly. He separated the gloves from the scarf, and passed them into Vex's hands. "Could you try these on?" he said. "I had to guess at the sizes, so they might require some modifications."

“Did you make them?” Vex asked. She slipped her hands into the gloves, and he felt something tense come unhitched in his chest: they fit her perfectly. A small relief. He found himself somewhat distracted by her fingertips, flexing and curling. She had a bruise under one fingernail – the mark of a misaligned bowstring, perhaps.

Distantly, he answered her, “Yes, I did.”

Vex started to say something, her brows furrowed. Percy cut her off, lassoing her with the scarf as she laughed, startled. Together, they struggled with its alignment for an awkward minute - working out where it would fall between her furs and her leathers and her shoulder-guard. She slid a hand under her braid and flicked it free of the scarf, an automatic gesture that still drew his eye for its entire duration.

Once the scarf settled in its place, and Percy drew his hands back, Vex waited on the stair, unmoving. She held her hands up to her neck, squeezing the soft wool, and not meeting his eyes. "Percival, these are beautiful, as always,” she said, hesitation stalling every word, “but you know you don't have to buy my forgiveness. Don't you?"

"I'm trying to earn it, not buy it," he said, and added, teasingly, "In small but fabulous pieces."

"That's my point. I'm taking advantage of you, aren't I?" she said. He shrugged - even if she was, he could suffer that for a while longer. He had done so much worse to her, after all. His conviction did not waver, until Vex reached up took his face in her hands. The wool trapped between them felt exquisitely soft, and her bare fingertips even softer. "I've already forgiven you," she continued. "There's nothing to earn."

Percy gave a weak, stammering answer, glad that her hands would cover his blush somewhat. "Don't feel too badly," he said. "I like making things for you anyway."

“And I like having things you’ve made,” she replied. A thoughtful look crossed her face, and she mused, “It’s like you’re with me even when you’re not.”

Vex cradled his cheeks a moment longer, and her grin returned, broad and wicked. "They're  _really_ soft, aren't they?" she whispered, and scrubbed her palms against his skin.

"That was the idea," he answered.

Her gaze lingered on his. She stepped up, so they were sharing a stair, and kissed him gently on the mouth. In a sense, it was tradition - a kiss in recognition of a particularly clever craft - but it felt different, as well. Maybe because they stood in a quiet, secret corner of the castle, dusty and dim and intimate, or because she let the kiss linger far beyond the others, or because she held him still, even when she moved back and spoke again: "If you can let that guilt go, Percival, do it. I can't stand to see you torturing yourself like this. Alright, darling?"

"I'm certain I can try," he said. Her words would take a minute to sink in; until then, he settled for trembling like a leaf, caught up in some wild combination of anxiousness and joy.

After a last brush of her thumb across his cheek, Vex released him. The moment had grown tense, too tense, and she put that broad, brilliant smile again. In a voice that was just too loud, she joked, "Especially if you're going to keep making me pretty things anyway."

Percy pressed a hand to his heart, and bowed. He felt light as air, as if the guilt had released him at her request - if only for a blissful minute. “Of course. Always.”


	6. Affairs in Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a pair of anons on tumblr request Vax confronting Percy about his relationship with Vex. Here's another one that got slightly out of hand, a bit long and all. I don't know who you are, mysterious anon twins, but here's hoping this satisfies your cravings for some, shall we say, friendly confrontation?
> 
> Sorry about the ending, by the way. Couldn't help it.

Long before they joined Vox Machina, Vax knew his sister’s tricks inside and out. He knew the saucy winks that twisted unsuspecting hearts, he knew the half-psychotic smile she wore when threatening merchants with Trinket, he knew every drawling, doctored, careful construction of every sly sentence they’d ever used to con someone out of a coin. It wasn’t even out of habit; it had been a necessity. Vax had to know when his sister’s coup-de-grace was coming – the flashiest distraction, the cutthroat threat – so he could strike at the perfect time. When they missed each other’s cues, they ended up handcuffed or jailed, and all they learned from such punishments was how to watch each other more closely next time.

So because Vox Machina were family, he felt a little bad to see them on the receiving end of Vex’s cons. She’d outsmarted Scanlan for coin more than a few times, which was funny to everyone except him. She toyed with Keyleth in the same way, usually with the vain goal of teaching the poor druid a lesson or two in street smarts. And yet, despite being nearly as wily as Scanlan, the biggest victim of her machinations was, without exception, Percy. As far as Vax could see, his sister had the young lord wrapped around her finger. He never blushed or lost his footing, and his responses were always half-sarcastic and whipcrack quick, but all Vex ever had to do was call him ‘darling’ a few times and he’d wander off to do anything she asked, or make her anything she wanted.

With such knowledge, he really wasn’t surprised to hear Vex in Percy's workshop that evening, addressing him with a bashful smallness in her voice. Vax only heard the end of her sentence through the door, but he halted immediately, half out of politeness, and half out of curiosity. That was a voice meant to invoke pity - she was halfway through asking for a favour, he guessed. Maybe if she pulled something really clever, he’d get to have a good chuckle at Percy’s expense.

“-since Trinket got his teeth in it.”

In perfect silence, Vax sidled up to the workshop door. The grate was halfway shut; through the slats, he could see Vex seated on the workbench, idly kicking her feet. Percy stood next to her, bent over something on the table. “Yes, I can see that,” he said. He glanced at Vex, thoughtfully scratching his jaw. “Well, I can't risk you using this. I’ll have to make it over again, I’m afraid.”

“Only if you’ve the time, darling,” Vex answered – and that made Vax, whose hand had been halfway raised to knock on the door, freeze where he stood. The deference in her voice was properly faked, as was the helpless half-smile, but her eyes lingered on Percy when he turned back to the arrow, and Vax couldn’t think of a reason for that. If it was a play, Vex was _deep_ in character.

Percy lifted the arrow, and spun it between his fingers. At one time, it had been Vex’s grappling hook, but the head had been crushed, and it made a very distressing series of clunks as it moved. Vax couldn’t see much of the smile Percy gave Vex in response, but he could guess what it looked like – dizzy and enchanted. “I’ll make time,” he said. As an afterthought, he prodded her shoulder with the blunt end of the broken arrow, and she squirmed. He added, teasing, “Provided you stop feeding my presents to your bear.”

Vax brought his knuckles to the door again, and was on the point of knocking – until Vex looped her arms around Percy’s shoulders, fluid, thoughtless, like they’d done it a thousand times. Percy set the arrow aside on the workbench, and let Vex pull him closer. She asked, “How much time can you make?”

And Vax recoiled from the door a half-step, because that was _not_ a face Vex made when she was trying to trick someone. Her smile was too eager, too free – it wasn’t precise or controlled or remotely unreal. Percy planted his hands on the workbench, on either side of Vex's thighs, and gave a one-shouldered shrug under her folded arms. Then he leaned forwards, and kissed her on the mouth, and her eyes fell blissfully shut, and Vax _immediately_ turned on his heel and walked all the way to the end of the hall and back up the stairs without stopping because _what the fuck._

That kiss had not been a strategy. That was a kiss for its own sake, a kiss motivated by feelings rather than profit, and _that_ meant his sister’s heart was on the line. It also meant that the image of his sister kissing Percy had burned itself into the back of his eyelids, and so he probably needed to drink something very strong very soon. And yet, even as he paced, darker, heavier thoughts slipped into his head. He needed to take care of Vex, regardless of everything else - which meant he needed to talk to Percy.

His sister ascended the stairs almost a full hour later – an hour that Vax had spent quietly seething in a dark corner nearby, watching the stairwell for the slightest sign of movement. He stayed out of her sightline, and remained quiet. As far as he was concerned, Vex’s feelings were her business. She wandered down the hallway at a pleasant, leisurely speed, and called for Trinket at the end of the hall. Good - she looked content, and she had something to occupy herself with.

Percy trailed her by about twenty minutes, and he, too, looked alarmingly happy. His strides were loose, and he wore an easy, half-forgotten smile. Vax was only surprised he wasn’t _whistling._ Fuck’s sake.

“Percival!” he barked, and Percy stopped in his tracks, rebounding like he’d slammed into a brick wall. Vax stepped out of his secluded corner, and watched Percy heave a breath of relief.

“Sorry, Vax, I hadn’t noticed you-“

“ _Percy,_ ” Vax cut in. He clapped his hands together, rubbed them, and cracked his knuckles. “Percy, Percy. Percival de Rolo – you and I need to have a talk, eh?”

Despite the awkwardness of the address, Percy’s good mood didn’t flag. He answered “Certainly!” with a broad smile and a half-bow.

Vax started to feel a little queasy. Sort of hard to look at Percy and _not_ think of him mashing his scruffy jaws all over his sister’s face - not to mention that Vax remembered, at precisely that moment, how terrible he was at emotional confrontations. His lungs felt tight, and the air grew thick inside his throat. He had no idea what to say, where to even begin. So Vax slammed both hands on Percy’s shoulders – ignoring the yelp – and silently steered him down the hall, through the entryway, and out into the cool evening air.

“Are you kidnapping me?” Percy asked dryly, as they rounded the corner of the keep, moving into the shadowy trees that ringed Keyleth’s garden. The sun had fallen quite low, and the shadow of the wall fell over the flowers, painting everything around them a cool blue. They stood in the soft ring of loam around a young oak tree, whose leaves had just grown high enough to form a canopy over their heads.

“Nope,” Vax replied, and released him. Percy adjusted the collar of his shirt, and leaned against the oak tree. He waited, arms folded, and said nothing. Vax continued, his voice strained, “I’ve just got something to speak with you about, Percival, you know, and I don’t want to-“

He made a forceful hand gesture, one that seemed to express what he wanted better than a word would. Percy only looked confused.

“Right,” he replied. “I wouldn’t dream of, er-“ and he mimicked the hand gesture. It looked like he was pushing a plate of food away across an invisible table.

“Good, excellent,” Vax said eagerly. “And, you know, I know it’s a personal question, asking after your – intentions, but, well, obviously it’s a personal matter for me as well-“

Percy interrupted him with a loud, exasperated sigh. “Why does this keep happening to me?” he wondered under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Vax, you’ve been very supportive of me in the past, and I’m flattered, but I couldn’t do that to – er, to Keyleth – “

“Good gods, I’m not talking about _me,_ you arse!” Vax interrupted. “I’m talking about my sister!”

“Oh!” Percy said. Then he understood, and with a slow, drawn-out sagging of his shoulders, like a wilting flower, he repeated, “ _Oh._ You saw us, did you?”

“Yes. So.” Vax snapped his fingers, trying to pull everything from Percy without having to talk himself. “Intentions.”

As he stammered his answer, Percy looked left and right through the garden, as if he were planning an escape route. “I haven’t the slightest – Vax, look, this happened sort of quickly and almost entirely by accident-“ Vax’s eyes narrowed, and Percy swallowed, and shrank back against the tree. “If I had to guess, then, I'd like too make sure she’s – happy. To the best of my ability. Right?”

Vax stepped closer, close enough to be threatening. “That’s a squirrely answer, Percy,” he growled.

“Well,” Percy huffed, putting on his disgruntled-noble voice. His sister did that too, sometimes, and Vax found that similarity very irritating. “I’ve had literally about forty-eight hours to think about the entire situation, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t have anything more _poetic_ prepared.”

“Only two days?” Vax said, with a skeptical frown.

“Of course,” Percy said. “It’s not as if we’ve been hiding it intentionally. Vex was on the verge of finding a way to tell you, I believe.”

Vax glanced up, thinking back. The night before last hadn’t been a particularly remarkable one. He remembered, vaguely, that Vex and Percy had both vanished after dinner, but it hadn’t been anything too suspect. He’d assumed they were off being introverted or grumpy in their own separate corners – Vex in the woods, Percy in the workshop – and not that they’d gone gallivanting off together for some unprecedented romantic interlude.

If only they had _continued_ to be so discreet. Heaving another sigh, Vax asked, “You in love with her?”

Percy opened his mouth to answer, but said nothing, and closed it after a second. He looked away, towards the door of the keep. The only light in the garden came seeping in from that direction – a slight, orange glow from the front windows and the door, and the distant, dimming sunset – and it illuminated Percy’s face as he turned. In his silence, his face transformed. He looked curious, at first, and then his shoulders drew up and his eyebrows rose and he took a sudden, shaky breath, like he’d been shocked out of slumber. A faint, distant smile came onto his face, and a melancholy longing pulled his gaze to some imginary place. Vax would have found the revelation sort of adorable, if it hadn’t obviously been directed at Vex.

“Oh, never mind, you do,” Vax said bitterly. “Ugh. Alright, pay attention, de Rolo-“

He snapped his fingers again, and Percy looked towards him once more. Vax took a hearty breath of the chilly night air, and said, “I’m not sure she shares your feelings, but she likes you well enough. And she should have someone to take care of her other than me.”

Percy blinked, in silence, and then asked, “Are you _encouraging_ this?”

“Of course,” Vax answered, haplessly raising his hands.

An awkward silence hung between them for a long minute. Percy stared at him, trying to judge his honesty. Then, at last, he loosed a slightly hysterical laugh, and bent over, propping his hands on his knees. “Good gods, I thought you were going to murder me,” he said shrilly.

Despite himself, Vax chuckled. He bowed to Percy’s eye-level, and said, smirking, “Percival, you’re family to me. I don’t want Vex to be alone for the rest of her life, and I trust you. In fact, I'll give you a little advice.”

Percy pressed one hand flat to his chest, and breathlessly said, “Sure.”

“Be patient, if you can. Vex and I –" Vax thought of those blissful, unguarded expressions his sister had worn, of her tentative vulnerability, and how strange it all looked on his tougher, cleverer twin. He sighed, and said, "We’re not used to sticking around people like this. Might take her a little time to sort her feelings out.”

“Of course,” Percy answered."I'd never push her." He still seemed quite rattled, and confessed, “I’m sorry, I was entirely expecting you to threaten my life.”

Percy straightened back against the tree, and dusted off his waistcoat. Vax waited until his fiddling slowed, and then answered, keeping his voice carefully casual, “Well, I mean, it goes without saying-“

And he sprang forwards, slammed an elbow crosswise against Percy’s shoulders, and pinned him to the tree. With his left hand, he drew one of the daggers at his waist – just enough so the noise of slick, sharp metal reached Percy’s ears, because he didn’t need more than that. Percy squeezed his eyes shut, and Vax hissed, “-that if you hurt her in any way, or if you fuck up like you did in the Raven Queen’s temple, or if you break her heart, I’ll cut your balls off and feed them to Trinket.”

And Percy gave a small sigh, almost a noise of relief. “Ah, there it is,” he said.

“Feel better?”

“Sort of, yes,” Percy answered. Vax could feel the frustrated push of his chest against his forearm, fighting for more air. “I like to know where everybody stands on these things.”

“That's a worst-case scenario. Consider me optimistic,” Vax said darkly.

He sheathed his dagger, and lowered his arm, releasing Percy. He sank back into the dirt, smiling weakly. “You’re a good man, Percival," Vax reminded him. He thought, _or at least, you’re trying very hard to be –_ _and that might be even better, in the end_.

Percy responded with an ironic smile. “I don’t know how you’re both so convinced of that. I don’t think I’m particularly – admirable.”

He’d said _both –_ of course, Vax thought, his sister was trying to convince Percy of the exact same thing. Perhaps Vex would have better luck eventually, but Vax didn’t mind giving it a shot.

“Well,” he said. “You’ve got a reason to be admirable now. Think about it that way.”

Silent and serious, Percy looked down at the ground between their feet, already caught in contemplation. Vax abandoned him there, with a brusque “Goodnight, Percival.” He received a distant nod, without eye contact, in response. The tension loosened in Vax’s chest, and his breath came easier. He returned to the keep, feeling oddly relaxed. There was something satisfying about getting one's affairs in order. If luck, for once, favoured their little family, Vex and Percy would have each other, regardless of what befell them.

And it would befall them - and it  _would_ be soon.

Vax did not know how the Queen would claim him, not yet. He’d seen the ravens circling, and he’d seen the feathers shed in his footsteps, and he didn’t have to be a religious man to know what those omens were.

But when she did come – well. At least Vex wouldn’t be alone.


End file.
